sufi

lala
Mecca is looking absolutely packed rn mashallah

Live feed from Mecca (along with the Ramadan soaps) is essential viewing during the holy month

MBS attempted to stop the feed this year but couldnt get away with it

The filming uses these looong shots, so sometimes during prayer e.g they will zoom in from the entire massive great mosque inexorably slowly onto a single old chap weeping while he prays,
now they are looking down on the pilgrims like water circling the kaaba sliding into view on a verrry slow pan to the right, you hardly notice it's moving
 
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shakahislop

Well-known member
Mecca is looking absolutely packed rn mashallah

Live feed from Mecca (along with the Ramadan soaps) is essential viewing during the holy month

MBS attempted to stop the feed this year but couldnt get away with it

The filming uses these looong shots, so sometimes during prayer e.g they will zoom in from the entire massive great mosque inexorably slowly onto a single old geezer weeping as he prays,
now they are looking down on the pilgrims circling the kaaba like water on a verrry slow pan to the right, you'd hardly notice it's moving
remember the first time i came across the mekka / hajj etc stuff like this on tv, it's incredible to watch (for about five minutes). sounds great too.
 

version

Well-known member
I mostly watch Perry Mason, Columbo and The Fugitive at the moment. They seem to be on all the time on a few of the freeview channels.

It's funny seeing how tailored the ads are to the old people who obviously make up the bulk of the audience; it's all cremation services, mobility scooters and alarm systems.
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
I mostly watch Perry Mason, Columbo and The Fugitive at the moment. They seem to be on all the time on a few of the freeview channels.

It's funny seeing how tailored the ads are to the old people who obviously make up the bulk of the audience; it's all cremation services, mobility scooters and alarm systems.
Did you see the Perry Mason reboot? I didn't see the original, but I thought the reboot was good. Tatiana Maslany's a really interesting actress in my opinion.
 

Leo

Well-known member
I mostly watch Perry Mason, Columbo and The Fugitive at the moment. They seem to be on all the time on a few of the freeview channels.

It's funny seeing how tailored the ads are to the old people who obviously make up the bulk of the audience; it's all cremation services, mobility scooters and alarm systems.

here, it's got to be 50-75% pharmaceutical ads for any ailment that older people suffer from.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I mostly watch Perry Mason, Columbo and The Fugitive at the moment. They seem to be on all the time on a few of the freeview channels.

It's funny seeing how tailored the ads are to the old people who obviously make up the bulk of the audience; it's all cremation services, mobility scooters and alarm systems.
I remember watching Columbo on daytime TV when off school with a cold or whatever, and noticing that a very high proportion of the ads during the show seemed to be for tampons and sanitary pads.
 

catalog

Well-known member
About a young American Egyptian guy, struggling with wanting to be a good Muslim. It's got a lot of cringe comedy elements and does a good thing where it focuses entire episodes on the rest of his family so you get a bit of insight into the parents and develop a bit of sympathy for them. Goes a bit crazy in series 2 but somehow manages to keep it together.
 

forclosure

Well-known member
I remember watching Columbo on daytime TV when off school with a cold or whatever, and noticing that a very high proportion of the ads during the show seemed to be for tampons and sanitary pads.
There's been a surprising amount of people especially around the pandemic who started watching Columbo in a similiar way to how alot of people started really getting into the Sopranos at that time.

Just arguably not as obnoxsious and with much less broad "ethnic" jokes aswell (Twitter deciding that Italian Americans are the one ethnic group its ok to make fun of)
 

version

Well-known member
There's been a surprising amount of people especially around the pandemic who started watching Columbo in a similiar way to how alot of people started really getting into the Sopranos at that time.

Just arguably not as obnoxsious and with much less broad "ethnic" jokes aswell (Twitter deciding that Italian Americans are the one ethnic group its ok to make fun of)
Yeah, I've noticed this too. That same semi-ironic Twitter thing sprung up around it. I'm sure it will burn itself out eventually and someone will make a meme about a type of guy who watches Columbo.
 

catalog

Well-known member
Who is watching "We own the city", follow up of sorts to the wire, in that there's a few of the same actors, and it's set in Baltimore, and is a cop/drug procedural.

I read one of the books it's based on a while back.

Not as good as the wire, but still good

 

IdleRich

IdleRich
I think the first person I heard talking about Severance was @Clinamenic. The premise was instantly intriguing to me - it reminded me a lot of the idea behind A Scanner Darkly which, out of all the PKD I've read or watched, is, I think, the one I found the most immediately fascinating - since then I've had it recommended from various other diverse quarters and ultimately it became a matter of when I got round to it.

And now I have; i started a couple of days ago and aready I'm on the penultimate episode. It's not without its flaws but the main idea is a great one and so far it's well-handled. There is a mystery here and as a viewer you can't help but be drawn into it - and for me the way they give you a little bit each time is the right balance between revealing and tantalising. I really do hope that they have it all mapped out and that it doesn't peter out directionlessly as so many other series with promising starts have done.

I'm fed up of great ideas being sacrificed to the demands of the format and simply fading away, their vitality increasingly diluted as the story is stretched beyond breaking point in an attempt to get that all important second season.

More and more I feel that these tv series are viciously destructive of great ideas. Or worse, it seems that the format is one that by its very nature brings about great spurts of creativity in the form of series that begin brilliantly, dragging in as many viewers as possible - but then abandons these ideas, leaving them to cool off underwhelmingly, relying on the viewers' initial curiosity to keep them hooked even though any spark has long ago died. I hope this isn't another of those.
 

version

Well-known member
We have been watching Mindhunter. Started great, I love the premise and the way it looks... I like the relationship between the two main guy's. A zealot and a cynic as usual, but not too much so, a relationship you can believe might work and progress and so on.

But it looks increasingly as though they are gonna fuck it up. I honestly couldn't give a shit about how the main guy gets on with his gf and the other one can't relate to his son.

There is a reason why they adverts describe it as something like "A rogue FBI unit develops criminal behavioural psychology by interviewing serial killers and attempting to apply what they learn to current unsolved cases" rather than "A miserable fat guy argues with his wife about their son and the situation is exacerbated by his stressful job" - the first one is a dramatic development in one of the most salaciously fetishisd fields of criminality, the latter is a day in the life of half of the viewers. So why the fuck let the show drift with the latter story becoming more dominant?

These last few episodes have gone in the wrong direction with bad narrative choices... they are in danger of wasting a good premise.

Watched both seasons in the last week or so and feel similarly - enjoyed it overall, but the bits outside the police work dragged and seemed like obligatory character development they didn't have the ideas for.

They dropped it in S2 with Holden, but Tench and Wendy's personal troubles just weren't interesting and it was too on the nose to have one of the characters happen to have a kid who looks like he could become a serial killer.

I'm surprised they even went with that as there were other things there that seemed tastefully misleading and ambiguous: never finding out whether that creepy headmaster did anything more serious, the weird atmosphere around Wendy leaving food out for the cat in the basement window, the back door to Tench's house being ajar when he got in one night.
 
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